The success of every startup and small business is determined by the opening set of employees. If these employees have flaws and fail to work hard, it has a direct impact on the company growth. Since a startup cannot afford to hire and fire and rehire employees, it is important to have a streamlined recruitment process that helps you identify, attract and recruit qualified candidates. However, the road to recruitment success does not follow a predefined course because it involves a whole gamut of resources including social channels, professional networks, job boards, employee referrals, career pages and more. Here are 6 steps that startup owners can follow to make the entire recruitment process fast, easy and efficient:
- Planning Recruitment to Meet Your Business Needs
Use your business goals as a framework to anticipate your future needs and accordingly decide when to recruit, what number to recruit, the skills you need, and the experience to handle a specific job or a project. You may also want to consider seasonal fluctuations depending on your niche and the likely levels of attrition before arriving at an ideal balance of freelancers, contract workers, and full-time employees. If you don’t have a support function like HR in your company, you can also consider hiring a consultant to take the hassles out of your hiring process. If you plan to do it yourself you would also need to determine the local salaries in your industry and decide if your new hires would need training.
- Building an Influential Employer Brand
Being a startup owner you have to indulge yourself in brand building to give your prospects a clear view of what it would be like to work with you. Make sure your messaging focuses on your mission, vision and long-term goals. This would help your potential employees to visualize themselves as a part of a fast-growing company that is financially stable and has good opportunities for career growth. To attract top talent that can take your business forward, you need a branded careers site that is easy to surf, loads faster on every device, and o
In order to attract top industry talent, a startup must draft job descriptions that not only stand out but also market your openings in best possible way. When you draft your job descriptions, be sure to include the following details:
- List out the main responsibilities along with occasional tasks while keeping the tone conversational
- Define how the requirements may undergo change over time
- Segregate what is essential from what is desirable
- Define the personality and attitude required for the job
- Describe the standard of work and skills you expect
- Include the experience you expect your candidates to bring to the table
- If possible include extra benefits like incentives, flexible work hours, or free food.
Don’t forget to personalize your JDs and team them up with an attractive logo, a compelling color scheme and social proof for that lasting effect.
- Using Social Media to Expand the Reach
Social media gives you easy access to both active jobseekers and passive prospects by allowing you to share content and advertise openings. You can also use relevant keywords, hash tags, and blog posts to spread the word. While you capitalize on your brand power using social media, accelerate your reach for maximum results with talent acquisition software. Using talent acquisition software, you can automatically publish all your openings on your social page and allow your candidates to apply directly from their social profiles and share your openings to generate maximum referrals. Talent acquisition software saves a lot of time while increasing your closing rate significantly.
- Filtering the Right Fit
The most difficult part of the recruitment funnel is finding the right candidates that possess the required talent and skill set. Since you would be posting jobs on multiple sources simultaneously, you are likely to receive a large number of applications. Screening them is a labor-intensive task unless you have talent acquisition software that comes with a smart filter for screening the right fit in a fraction of seconds.
- Leveraging Automation
Automation is the biggest asset any growing business can have. It cuts down on your time and efforts drastically, reduces delays, eliminates discrepancies, and keeps you candidates aware and updated at every step. Right from posting your openings on various platforms and screening the right applications to sending interview emails and monitoring your performance, an Applicant Tracking System can accomplish every task that can take your hours in a few minutes.
So, make the most of technology and stay focused on your goal – growing your business!
About Kelly Barcelos:
Kelly Barcelos is a progressive digital marketing manager specializing in HR and is responsible for leading Jobsoid’s content and social media team. When Kelly is not building campaigns, she is busy creating content and preparing PR topics. She started with Jobsoid as a social media strategist and eventually took over the entire digital marketing team with her innovative approach and technical expertise.
